Back Cover

Could
computers ever really think? They can
now drive cars on
suburban streets, control
spaceships and have even won the Jeopardy! game show. But
could they ever be self aware,
create original ideas, develop their own
goals, and
write complex computer programs?

Why can't computers already
think?
Why has 60 years of research failed to produce a single
intelligent robot? What has been learnt, what are
the technically difficult
problems, and when are they likely to be solved?

What would computers think
about?
What would be their challenges, goals and aspirations?
They certainly would not need children. Would they need us?

This book addresses the unseen elephant in the room.
Computers
are becoming ever more intelligent. The future
will not be anything like it used to be.

The book differs from other recent works by providing a strong
focus on what caused people to ultimately be the way we are, namely
upon natural
selection. It then attempts to predict how natural
selection would condition an intelligent
machine's behaviour
by considering the very different world that it would
experience.

Several technical and rhetorical arguments are
presented both for
and against the hypothesis that computers will, eventually, be able to
think. There is also some discussion about what it
actually means to be
intelligent and the limitations of terms such as “creative”
and “self aware”.

The second and largest part of the book then
describes existing AI technologies in some detail. These
include symbolic and logic based approaches, Bayesian expert systems,
vision, speech, robotics, and an overview of computational
neuroscience. This provides
a more realistic basis for predictions of the future
as well as simply gaining a better understanding of what intelligence
actually is. It helps ground abstract philosophical
discussions in terms of real, practical technologies. The
text is moderately technical while being aimed at the
general reader.

The
book also posits that intelligent machines will be developed as
succession of ever more intelligent software tools that are released
and used in the real world. The book then analyzes
the
medium term effects of those semi-intelligent tools upon society.
This includes some surprising results from an
historical review of existing technologies.

There is a growing awareness of these issues, with concerns recently
raised by physicist Stephen Hawking, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and
billionaire Elon Musk.

Overview

My
young daughters asked their mother how old she was when she received
her first mobile phone, and which games it could play.
They were
appalled to learn that in the dark and distant olden days people did
not have mobile phones, and certainly not ones that could render
sophisticated three dimensional graphics. People could only
be
contacted when their location was known to be near a fixed line
telephone so that there were many hours in each day when friends could
not be instantly messaged. Such an existence must have been
grim
indeed.

For most of the uncounted millennia of man's
existence technical progress has been barely perceptible.
Then a few hundred years ago the rate of progress started to
increase, faster
and faster, until now advances achieved over the last few decades
have been
greater than those achieved during entire millennia of man's existence.
Not only is progress amazingly fast in historical terms, it
is
getting faster every decade.

This book considers what that future might
bring given the huge technological changes that we are witnessing.
In
particular, it considers the nature of computers and software, and asks
the question “Could computers ever actually think?”. To be
programmed to think autonomously like people
do, as opposed to just doing what they are programmed to do.

Back
in the 1960s the prospect of thinking machines was very real, and
people were very concerned about how intelligent they might become. But
after sixty years of development it is
clear that computers still
cannot really think. They are a useful tool,
but
they cannot address new problems without detailed programming. However,
just
because something has not yet been achieved does not mean that it will
never be achieved. Computers can already fly aeroplanes,
control space ships and drive cars on suburban streets.
They have beaten grand masters at chess, and even more
impressively, won the Jeopardy! trivia game show.

If
indeed computers could ever really think then this book then
considers
what they might think about. And in
particular what they might
think about us.

Some
people look forward to a computer driven
utopia, with intelligent computers providing all the grinding labour so
that humanity could live a carefree life of art and leisure. Diseases
would be
cured, wars would be prevented, the poor would be fed. Ultimately
our own brains might be
integrated with the computer's, or possibly even uploaded into a
computer. Computer software need not grow old, so in this way
we
might cheat old age and death and become immortal.

But
something that seems too good to be true often is too good to
be true. Will computers be our humble servants, our
benevolent
masters, or our cruel jailers? Or will they
simply eliminate humanity because we are in their way? If our
computers
did start to threaten us, why would we not simply turn them off?

The
book is
divided into three parts. It is not at all clear that
computers
could ever really think and so the first part presents the many
arguments that have been made both
for and against the ability of computers to eventually gain human level
intelligence. The issue of what a thinking computer might be
like
is then introduced, as well as how it might interact with
mankind.

It is difficult to
define the meaning of “intelligence” independently
from
the technologies that attempt to implement it. Some tasks
that
appear to display great intelligence actually require minimal
intelligence, while other tasks that seem to be trivial are not nearly
as easy as they appear.

The
second and largest part addresses this by providing a solid
introduction
to Artificial Intelligence
(AI) technologies. It critiques the impressive
early results in AI research, and then reviews various approaches to
modelling the world formally using logic, and the difficulty of
reasoning
with uncertain knowledge. Building robots that can function in the real
world introduces additional problems of vision and movement. Both
artificial and biological neural networks are
also described in some detail together with the practical difficulties
involved with brain emulation. This part provides sufficient technical
details to understand how the technologies actually work, but without
using heavy mathematics. It should help raise the level of
discussion about artificial intelligence.

What will computers think about?Public, NASA supercomputer.

The
third part of the book considers what the true nature of an
intelligent machine might
be. It takes a novel approach by first considering what forces made
people the way we are. Why we value love and kindness, truth and
beauty. The
answer, ultimately, must be the same force that made us physically the
way that we are, namely the force of natural selection. The survival
strategies of other species provide insights into how our own moral
values such as honesty and charity actually increase our own fitness to
survive. Natural selection has produced genes and memes that have
caused our many ancestors to perform deeds both noble and contemptible
that have
enabled them to successfully raise children that bore children of their
own.

The
book then contrasts the human condition with the radically different
environment that an intelligent
computer program would experience. Software can
run on
a network of computers
without being embodied in any particular machine so it would have
a quite different concept of self to our own
brain-centred intelligence. Software is
potentially immortal and
so has no need of children. It is composed of
software
components that are
ruthlessly replaced when better components become available. It
could continually reprogram its own mind. Analysing the world
from the perspective of intelligent software provides insights
into what strategies and
goals
it might need to support its own struggle for
survival.

Computers are slowly becoming more intelligent, and they will
have
an
increasing impact on society long before they gain human level
intelligence. Robots are automating more and more manufacturing
processes as well as being used in the many smaller and less structured
factories. Robots are also beginning to leave the factory and
operate semi-autonomously in the real world. Several
manufacturers are planning to mass produce cars and trucks that
can drive themselves over the next decade. Machines will start to
perform repetitive jobs such as cleaning offices or laying bricks
within a couple of decades.

Ever more intelligent computers are already beginning to
control our
lives. Applications for bank loans and insurance policies are already
assessed by computer expert systems rather than human clerks. Computers
are being used to recognize faces seen by surveillance cameras and then
to correlate them with the vast amount of other data that is collected
about us. Software can understand written documents well enough
to perform usable translations into other languages, and will soon
become much better at analysing their content. Computers are also
beginning to influence political decisions. Search engines already
influence what what read and possibly whom we date. This book considers
the extent to which computers might end up controlling our lives before
they become truly intelligent.

The ultimate goal of artificial intelligence research is to
produce
a
computer that can perform artificial intelligence research, which would
enable it to reprogram its own mind. Several writers have predicted
that this will lead to an exponential increase in intelligence as ever
more intelligent computers become better at becoming more intelligent.
This means that humans would no longer be the most intelligent being on
the planet.

Several approaches have been proposed to deal with extremely
intelligent computers. These range from keeping them locked in a box to
carefully designing initial versions to ensure that the software
remains friendly to humans. There are many challenges to each of these
approaches, and it is unclear whether they are likely to succeed. In
the longer term, the force of natural selection may cause computers to
do what is in their own best interests in order to survive.

The book does not vaguely address all the sundry singularity
technologies and postulate how
wonderful, terrible, or unlikely they are. Instead, it bluntly
addresses one very
conventional and real technology in detail,
namely software running on computers.
It takes a cold look at where that technology is likely to lead, with
an unusually strong focus on natural
selection. It also reviews other writers' books and papers
on the subject to provide alternative perspectives.

There has been a slowly growing awareness of these issues.
Technology
billionaire Elon Musk recently warned that research into artificial
intelligence
was “summoning the devil” and that artificial intelligence is our
biggest existential threat. World famous physicist Stephen Hawking
expressed his
concerns that “the development of full artificial
intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”. Microsoft founder
Bill Gates has expressed concern. Jaan
Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, commented “I wish this was
science fiction, but I know that it is not”. In January 2015
many of the worlds leading researchers into artificial intelligence
signed a letter written by the Future
of life institute warning
of the dangers and promoting research so that “our AI
systems (must) do what we want them to do”.